As for the fastest growing suburbs in SA over the past year, New World Wealth's research found them to be Seapoint and Three Anchor Bay in Cape Town (both R30 000/m²), Illovo (R17 000/m²), Parkhurst (R12 000/m²), Noordhoek (R11 000/m²), Franschhoek (R10 000/m²), Nature's Valley (R8 000/m²) and Zinkwazi (R8 000/m²).

Amoils told Fin24 that However, one should note that all these suburbs start from a relatively low square meter price base when compared to the likes of Bantry Bay and Clifton.

Research

New World Wealth used two different measures to make the determination of the most exclusive suburbs as of the third quarter of 2017.

The first option used was to look at the price per square metre.

According to Amoils, this is internationally considered to be the best option to use. He points out, however, that this measure has some limitations, especially when it comes to valuating houses.

"There is a bit of a lack of information about square metre stats in SA. The way property price growth is calculated on the average price in an area is not great," Amoils told Fin24.

"If a big house is sold, then it just pushes the price up in an area. We also highlight issues when it comes to areas without apartments as square metre stats don't work well on houses."

In his view, price per square meter stats only work really well on apartments and some areas don’t have many apartments which makes it tricky.

"This is due to the garden element. For instance, how do you value the garden?" he explained.

The second option used was to determine the number of R20m homes in an area.

According to Amoils, this allows one to see how many very wealthy people are living in an area. He again points out that this measure can be deceiving as areas that are mainly large houses - such as Sandhurst, Plettenberg Bay and Bishopscourt - tend to outperform areas that are mainly apartments - such as Umhlanga. It is because very few apartments are large enough to cost over R20m.

Also, some suburbs, for instance Contantia, are much larger than others, for instance Llandudno, which "unfairly" favours them.